Within the last thirty years there has been a revolution in use of plastic, or plastic-like credit cards, debit cards and gift cards. In more recent years further developments have led to the use of such phone and credit card technologies in the field of products that are activated at the point of sale. These products are distributed to retailers in bulk and are activated by the retailers or another party upon purchase by the end user.
Before the advent of point of sale activation, such debit and gift cards were typically kept under lock and key because in their activated form they were valuable and easy to steal. With point of sale activation, the cards are now displayed freely since they are essentially valueless until activated. This has led suppliers of the cards to desire attractive packages that are easy to display, inexpensive to ship in bulk, and capable of indicating unauthorized activation.
Numerous attempts to provide point of sale products for metered accounts have overlooked a simple solution involving a combination of ease of manufacture, excellent point of sale surface configuration for advertising, ease of separation of a card from an attached sheet, and protection against theft.